Director Claudio Fragasso refers to this film as the “last gasp” of Italian zombie movies. If you’re expecting Zombi, well, let’s not forget the movies that Claudio has blessed us with, both by himself and with Bruno Mattei: Beyond Darkness/La Casa 5, Troll 2, RoboWar, Rats: Night of Terror, The Other Hell and Shocking Dark.

The movie starts as researchers discover that the natives are practicing voodoo, so they kill the priest, who places a curse that brings the dead back to life before he dies. Only a young girl named Jenny (soon to be played by Candice Daly, Liquid Dreams) survives thanks to an enchanted necklace her parents gave her.

Years later, she returns to the island to find out exactly what happened. And she isn’t alone — she’s brought a gang of mercs with her. There’s Tommy (Don “The Dragon” Wilson!), Dan (Jim Gaines, American Ninja), Rod and Louise, Rod’s girlfriend. And then there are also some hikers — Chuck (played by 80’s gay porn star Jeff Stryker), David (Massimo Vanni/Alex McBride, who is in a ton of Italian exploitation as an actor and stuntman) and Mad — who have found the underground temple where the curse was originally created.

Of course, they bring the curse back and David is eaten and Mad killed. Rod soon gets bitten and ends up killing his girlfriend. David comes back and kills Dan. Seriously, our cast is pretty much cannon fodder. Tommy volunteers to stay behind and blow the base up to take out the zombies as Jenny and Chuck run back to the cave.

There, Chuck is attacked and killed by zombies while Jenny removes her protective necklace and becomes a super zombie that can rip out its own eyeball and survive. And then, Fulci style, the movie just ends.

The cave set looks a ton like the sets of City of the Living Dead. And the movie really jumps all over the place. But does any other zombie movie have as catchy a theme song as this? Alright, does any zombie movie not called Return of the Living Dead have a song this good?

Severin has the definitive release of this, complete with interviews with Daly (recorded before she died in 2004), Stryker, Fragasso and Drudi. You even get a CD of the soundtrack. What are you waiting for?

“Venice before the year 2000. Squares, museums and churches. Tourists crowd the streets. Venice is threatened by the high tide. The seaweed is killing the oxygen in the waters and the putrid waters are corroding the foundations of the city. This is Venice today. What will happen tomorrow?”

Say what you will about Bruno Mattei, but the dude knows how to grab you from the first frame of travelogue footage!

The film starts in a control room, where a bunch of dudes in grey and yellow futuristic jumpsuits watch a research base and most of Venice fall into chaos, as one guy keeps screaming that there are mutants everywhere. There are no survivors, just chunks of videotape that they watch.

Basically, if this feels more like Aliens than the Terminator rip-off you were expecting, buckle the fuck up. While this movie was released as Terminator 2, Mattei and his cohorts Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, who activated their Wonder Twin powers of insanity to create Troll 2, refuse to stop at covering one film. Oh no — this movie is too strange for that.

They decide to assemble a team — the Mega Force! — to investigate and they bring Sara, a scientist, along to find the diary that has the answers to this breakout. Samuel Fuller from the Tubular Corporation asks to come along, just like Bishop. The fact that two of the members of the team are Geretta Geretta and Tony Lombardo from Rats: Nights of Terror are all the reason I needed to purchase this. The even more amazing fact that Geretta is playing a tribute version of Vasquez from Aliens is the icing on this slice of exploitation tiramisu.

Geretta’s first line is “Alright you bunch of pussies, I’m back and I’m kicking ass!” Then, we watch one of the kinda sorta Space Marines on Operation: Delta Venice practice his nunchakus with his back to the camera. Come on dude — work the hard cam. Also: the Mega Force’s base looks like a high school locker room. Also also: they are not Megaforce.

There’s a member of the Mega Force that has long blonde hair and wears Oakley glasses and a red bandana. I love him already. Geretta’s character, Koster, then starts to yell about Italians being allowed on the mission and gets into a racially motivated fight with another crew member. Mega Force! Get it together!

If you haven’t picked it up yet, I love this fucking movie. This is why I watch Italian low budget genre films all wrapped up in one messy package. The acting is either way too intense or has stilted line readings, sometimes within the same sentence. The costumes are laughable. And the action is everything you wish there was more of in other films without pesky things like character development and a plot to get in the way.

Every time I worry that I’ll never find a film like 2019: After the Fall of New York or 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Italian filmmakers surprise me with something wonderful. All you need are some vests, bike helmets and soccer pads and a fancy synth score and you have a futuristic army ready to do battle with whatever the hell the bad guys in this movie are.

The Mega Force finds a bunch of people inside the alien eggs, but those people beg to be killed before grabbing and choking Koster. Soon, the aliens or mutants or whatever they are decide to throw people around and kill everything in their path. If you love movies where people fall to their deaths, this should be in your collection.

If you thought there wouldn’t be a Newt character, you aren’t watching much Italian cinema. Yep — in the midst of all this craziness, a small child has survived.

The best scene in the film has the soldiers all trapped in a room and the scientist vainly trying to open the door by pushing the left button. Clearly, there is a button on the right, too. She ignores this and keeps jamming the left button like someone trying to make the elevator get there faster. Finally, after screaming, monsters blowing up and much death, someone finally tells this brilliant scientist to just push the button on the right. Holy shit — this movie is awesome.

I have learned many things from this movie. No matter what language you speak, your scream sounds pretty much universal. You can fire a Franchi SPAS-12 one-handed and accurately hit a target. And while I previously was taught that seaweed is really algae and algae helps provide much of the Earth’s oxygen, in the world of this film this is not true. Basically — fuck science!

I wonder — was Samuel Fuller named for the director? Why is Venice the center of the world? And why, when I knew this was also called Terminator 2, was I so surprised and elated that the Bishop character was also a Terminator?

Finally, the ending — if you think that they’re not gonna get time travel somewhere in this wedding soup…just wow.

If you come to a party at my house in the next few months, chances are that you will be forced to watch this movie while I scream like a maniac and laugh my ass off. You have no choice but to comply.

Of course, Severin put this out. Grab one now — don’t delay!

Feed Shark

Did you know that Larry Cohen wrote, produced and directed the last film Bette Davis was ever in? No? Well, she dropped out after filming began, citing issues with the script and how she was being photographed, but Cohen claims that it was due to her ill health. Regardless, the results are…interesting.

Davis plays the title villain, a chain-smoking witch (Becca sees her as the hero of the story) who marries Sam (Lionel Stander, Max from Hart to Hart) while his vegetarian family — daughter Jenny (Colleen Camp, the maid from Clue) and husband Steve (David Rasche from Sledge Hammer!) — are on vacation.

When Davis left the film, her character becomes a cat and her daughter Priscilla (Barbara Carrera, Never Say Never Again, Condorman) takes over as the film’s villain. She mostly argues with her other about switching bodies and sleeping with Steve.

People get shrunk, Tom Bosley, Seymour Cassel and Richard Moll (remember, all 80’s horror and science fiction must have either him or Robert England in it) show up and there’s a crazy moment where Jenny discusses how much she misses her mother and they show a photo of Joan Crawford!

This is…well, it’s weird. You can tell the movie fell apart when Davis left days into filming for a dentist visit and never came back. Her ADR was all done by Michael Greer (Thorn from Messiah of Evil!), who was an accomplished female impersonator. What a strange film!

Are you ready to be further confused by the House and La Casa numbering and naming structure? The Horror Show had been financed through pre-sales of foreign distribution rights using the title House III. By the time filming began, the film was definitely going to be part of the series, then United Artists thought that The Horror Show was a better title for the U.S.

OK. Makes sense so far, right? But when House IV came out in 1992, many of us couldn’t remember there being a House 3. And with the internet in its infancy, not many of us knew that The Horror Show was also La Casa 6 in Italy. Confused yet?

It gets worse. The Horror Show is about a killer named Meat Cleaver Max, played by Brion James, who is sentenced to the electric chair and dies. But wait — he’s made a deal with the devil and comes back to haunt the cop who put him away — as well as that policeman’s family — with supernatural powers.

There are also some character actor appearances — Lewis Arquette (father of the Arquette family of actors) and Lawrence Tierney (Reservoir Dogs). But this movie feels the weight of the late 80’s push for movies to be sequelized, in the same way that Shocker felt like it was made to set up a franchise.

But wait — isn’t that the same plot as 1989’s Shocker with Horace Pinker making a deal with the devil to come back and haunt the football player who helped capture him? Yes. You are 100% correct. The same year, The First Power had the same exact storyline, too! You could also point to 1987’s Prison and 1988’s Destroyer as having similar concepts, but The Horror Show/House 3/La Casa 6 and Shocker go beyond that and feel like the same exact movie (except for the pop culture elements that Craven injected into his take as he tried to create a new Freddy).

And again — this has nothing to do with the two House movies that came before, which have nothing to do with each other either, other than the title. Whew!

Let’s just get to the movie, where Meat Cleaver Max escapes and frames Detective Lucas McCarthy (Lance Henriksen, Near Dark) for a new series of crimes and haunts the house where his family lives. Only a parapsychologist can help them now.

Of course , everything ends up happy. Of course, the cat survives. Of course, they get a 5-year supply of chili at the end. What?!? Seriously — I regret the time I spent watching The Horror Show and that doesn’t happen all that often. I’m not the only one embarrassed. Noticeably in the opening credits, Allyn Warner is credited as Alan Smithee. I love that they spelled Allan Smithee — the pseudonym when someone wants their name taken off a movie — incorrectly.

Want to see The Horror Show? Shout! Factory has you covered, as they’ve released the film to blu-ray. Or you can grab the House 3 version that Arrow Video released at Diabolik DVD. It’s also streaming for free with commercials at VUDU.

Feed Shark

I wonder, quite often, why hasn’t there been a new Friday the 13th for nearly 9 years? Then I watched every single one of the films, back to back to back (and back) and I can tell you that they’re endless repetitive movies that ended up relying on gimmicks to get by. Is there a new idea that can make them fresh (yes, there is Hollywood, comment right here to get my ideas)? Has anyone even asked Jason Vorhees if he even wants to come back?

Unmasked part 25 is all about Jackson, a serial killing maniac with a hockey mask who is tired of killing. He can’t even remember why he started killing, other than a horrible childhood that he feels absolves himself of all guilt. Nothing makes sense until he meets Shelly, a blind girl who makes him see that there can be more to life than ripping out peoples’ hearts.

The world knows so much about Jackson’s life that his murders have been filmed in a series of films called Unmasked (or Hand of Death, if you’re watching the film’s other title. This makes no sense when we get to the marquee at the end, but I doubt they had the budget to film that scene twice.). His father was a killer too, one who could have been the world’s greatest if only he had the heart to kill his wife and son. Instead, they moved to America, where Jackson was believed dead after drowning at a summer camp (if you didn’t get the reference, this is so not the film for you). Now, he lives with his drunkard of a father who constantly laments the days when he was a killing machine and how bad of a son he has.

Shelly offers an escape — as a blind woman, she can’t see his scarred face. She even understands his need to wear a mask at all times. In fact, she blindly — pardon the pun — understands everything that Jackson throws at her.

Unmasked part 25 is a wildly uneven film to say the least and perhaps that’s part of its charm. At times, like when Shelly is trying to introduce Jackson (clad in red boxers with “bad boy” written on the ass) to BDSM, it’s played like a broad comedy. At other times, such as when he reads her Byron or talks about how everyone wearing a mask at Halloween angers him, it reaches a grimy paw at the heartstrings. And there are also moments — like when Jackson literally tears a man’s face off (played by Christian Brando, whose ill-fated life could have been a horror movie) — it’s a straight-up slasher movie with more than decent special effects.

Once Jackson learns that Shelly is pregnant with his child and that the more time he spends around normal people, the more he wants to kill. As the film spirals to its downbeat ending, the masked killer learns that he can never walk away from his fate, not when there’s an Unmasked part 26 on the marquee.

Unmasked part 25 has some moments that made me cringe — the BDSM scene is played for laughs and Jackson can’t understand why his partner would enjoy sex and roughness together, yet he can only be aroused after killing. It’s an oversimplification of a much more complicated mindset, but then again, you don’t watch gore movies for subtext, right? But it’s also way better than you’d expect, attempting to tie the murders of a masked maniac to the real world. It’s also never been released on DVD, so if you want it, you’re going to have to search iOffer or eBay.

UPDATE: If any label was goign to get this on blu ray, it was going to be Vinegar Syndrome. Run to your internet device and order this NOW!

Sometimes, I watch movies in the middle of the night, after working long shifts of meetings, copywriting and brainstorming. Whatever brains that still exists in the mush and at this late hour are often exposed to sheer lunacy via films that I find on YouTube. When I awaken, my first thought is often, “Was that movie real or a nightmare?”

Elves is one of those films.

Kirsten and her friends innocently take part in an anti-Christmas pagan ritual in the woods, but then she cuts her hand and awakens a demonic elf who ends up being part of a Nazi plot to create the master race that Hitler always dreamed of. Yep, instead of the pure Aryan Nietzsche paradigm, the Führer dreamed of a world where human and elf hybrids would populate the globe.

Through one of those moments of perfect horror movie luck, Kirsten is the last pure Aryan virgin on earth. Nope, this isn’t a post-apocalyptic film. That’s just the way things are these days. Her grandfather was once a part of all of this, but he’s since reformed. Oh, he’s also her father, because inbreeding was a big part of keeping the bloodline pure.

But hey, Kirsten has no idea that any of this is going on. She’s just trying to get through the hell of holiday retail, working in a department store. That’s where she meets Mike McGain (Dan Haggerty, TV’s Grizzly Adams), an alcoholic homeless ex-cop who takes over for the store’s Santa Claus when the original is killed by an evil elf. Yes, I just wrote that sentence, perhaps the most batshit crazy one I’ve ever assembled in all my years of writing.

Mike starts living in the store, eating food that he steals from the snack bar where Kirsten works. One night, he saves her when the Nazis come to the store and kill all of her friends.

Will Kirsten survive? What does her mom think about all of this? Have you ever wanted to see a movie where an elf electrocutes a woman in a bathtub? What the fuck is an elfstone anyway? These and several other questions will and won’t be answered.

This is a film rich with purely inane and insane dialogue, including a lecherous cocaine using Santa that states, “Santa said oral!” and our heroine bemoaning that her only friend is a cat. There’s also a great scene where Mike goes to see a professor during a holiday dinner and the man describes how elves and Nazis are having this big ritual and incestual sex bloodlines in front of his children.

Geek note: Mike goes to the library and asks what the Dewey Decimal System Number is for the occult. The answer? 666. Nope. The real number would be 130, the code for books on parapsychology and the supernatural.

Is this film any good? Fuck no, it’s horrible. And I loved it. It’s my holiday gift to you and I’m so happy to share such a patently warped film with all of you.

Also, was this film inspired by The Little People, the potboiler that inspired Paperbacks from Hell?

It’s also never come out on DVD, an amazing thing in an age where nearly everything has been released. Luckily, the VHSPS crew have things covered!

Fright House isn’t a shitty movie. It’s two shitty movies in one. The first, called Fright House in a pre-meta meta way, is about devil worshippers covering up suicides. The second, Abaddon, is the worst version of Suspiria ever made. That’s not to say that the films aren’t without some charm. I just don’t want you thinking you’re getting Jean Rollin here. Or even Ruggero Deodato.

Let me try and explain what the fuck I just watched.

Fright House starts Paul Borghese as Detective Les Morane, a man who just lost his brother to suicide. His brother was a psychic or liked tarot cards or was just weird — it’s never really established, but it doesn’t matter, because he’s dead. However, the longer the film goes on, he more it seems that everyone in town is in on the Satanic cult action, letting family members die to make their lives better. “Grandpa” Al Lewis appears as Captain Levi, pretty much ad-libbing his way through his part. Turns out that he’s behind the whole thing, so if you ever wanted to see one of your favorite childhood characters become an evil cult leader, I can point you to this film. There are also a lot of 60’s style Satanism scenes, with nude women and pentagrams, if you’re into that sort of thing. Yeah, you’re into that sort of thing.

Oh — I almost forgot. There’s also copious non-Satanic nudity and a scene where frat boys fake a suicide and break into a long acted out sing-a-long of Michael Jackson’s “Bad.” There are also many digs at psychotherapy and a grave with Jason Vorhees name on it. It’s 57 minutes of your life that will feel like 57 hours.

Abaddon was also directed by Len Anthony (Murderous Intent and Vampires). It stars Duane Jones — yes, Ben from Night of the Living Dead and Dr. Hess of Ganga & Hess. He plays either a police detective or a sorcerer. According to an IMDB review, the film was shot at Long Island’s SUNY, where Jones taught acting, hence his participation.

Anyways, the film takes place at The Abaddon School (no Tanz Dance Academy, trust me) where people go to learn music. Or sing. Or act. It’s never really established. The owner, who no one ever sees, has found the fountain of youth and has to pay a terrible price for it. That price means demonic toilets eat people after they have sex.

Both movies end with a twist so bad that M. Night Shyamalan laughed.

There’s also a great part in between, after the credits for the first movie roll, that a voice says, “I’m not done frightening you yet!” Honestly, I felt like I’d been watching this for a week when that happened and the prospect that another film would begin filled me with dread.

This is the kind of film that hides behind a great box at the video store or comes on at 4:45 AM at an all-night drive-in multi-feature (yes, three hyphenated words in a row, I’m a pro). I worry that any more words that I say about this film will convince more people to watch it. I’m not that much of a sadist.

But how does it compare to Spookies (which trust me, I’ll get to), another film that combines multiple movies into one noncoherent whole? If I may paraphrase Senator Lloyd Bentsen: Fright House, I watched Spookies. I knew Spookies. I have a Spookies poster on my wall. Fright House, you’re no Spookies.

Before this whole internet thing and social media and everyone connected to a screen all the time era that we live in now, teenagers used to gather at a place called “the mall.” It contained everything they needed — a movie theater showing the latest entertainment, a place to buy media like audio cassettes and CDs and VHS tapes, clothing stores, even a full food court with their favorite foods. Yes, it was Amazon before Amazon, and people actually physically met one another. And it wasn’t always awesome, trust me, going to the mall every weekend could actually get pretty boring. That said — there wasn’t much else to do, unless you wanted to sit in front of the TV and watch Blood Sucking Freaks for the 90th time — but that’s just me.

As always, this movie was probably dreamed up in a room that looked like a Peruvian mountain, the air hazy with powder and only sound heard short toots on the drugs that had hours before been inside a balloon that was also inside someone’s asshole. Let’s not dwell — let’s look for that magic moment where a studio exec looks up, his perfect mullet and skin tone contrasting with the pure white haze of the room, upon which he opines, “You know, that Michael Crawford has been on Broadway doing Phantom of the Opera for awhile. But what if teenagers had their own Phantom? Where would he be?” Silence ensues, save for occasional nasal drip. After what seems like epochs, one lone voice rises above the tide: “At the mall. At the fucking mall.” The check is written. The film is made.

Lights. Camera. Sniff. Action.

On the eve of the opening of a new mall, a shadowy man steals a crossbow and kills a security guard. It’s hushed up, as so many people are losing their minds that such an amazing mall is open in their town. It’s probably only the eighth mall in Sharman Oaks )the movie was actually shot at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, Westfield Promenade and Valencia Studios), so this is big news.

Melody Austin (Kari Kennell Whitman, Playboy Playmate of the Month February, 1988) and Suzie (The Adventures of Ford Fairlaine and the girl at the craps table in Empire Records) are excited to get good jobs there. That’s when we learn that the killer is Eric (oh yeah, his name is in the subtitle, as if we’re supposed to know who Eric and why he wants revenge), Suzie’s supposedly dead boyfriend, who was lost in the fire that paved the way for the mall. Yep, his family wouldn’t sell and damn progress, now everyone is dead and Suzie has moved on, literally working for minimum wage on the ashes of the man she once had sex with in a room that oddly enough has a fireplace. I’ve been in plenty of houses — I’m not bragging, just stating fact — and I have never seen a teenager have a fireplace in their room before. Maybe it’s trust issues. Perhaps it’s just ridiculous.

To hide his face, Eric slices a mannequin head in half to form the traditional Phantom mask. Anyone that screws with Suzie dies, while he continues to leave her gifts — her favorite flowers, which triggers the above mentioned fireplace fornication flashback; playing her favorite song; even killing Justin (Tom Fridley, Jason Lives: Friday the 13th Part VI), the owner of the mall’s annoying son when he tries to come on too strong to Melody.

Oh that owner of the mall? He’s played by Jonathan Goldsmith, the original Most Interesting Man in the World. Yes, even hyperbolic ad pitchmen had to pay the bills at some point. He’s aided and abetted by Morgan Fairchild, who plays Mayor Karen Wilton. Did you know that in the swinging 70s Morgan was held against her will on two separate occasions? Here she acts like she doesn’t know what’s going on until late in the picture — turns out she’s behind it all and pays the price by being lofting off the third level of the mall and impaled. It’s a wonderful death, as Frank Miller Batman would mutter under his breath.

This movie stars a lot of folks who have obviously written their own IMDB and Wikipedia pages. To wit — star of the show Derek Rydall’s wiki features in-depth accounts of the scripts he’s helped doctor (he’s worked with both Deepak Chopra and Nick Cage, truly the Alpha and Omega of direct to streaming filmmaking), he’s written two books and he had a near-death experience that he’d love to tell you more about. You should just leave this here, open a new window and read up on it.

Seriously, he invented his own religious laws out of that experience. I can be patient. You can go read this, my silly movie blog will be around and waiting for you.

You know who didn’t write their own Wikipage? Rob Estes, that’s who. The dude is known to every kid who watched USA in the 90s and 00s, because Silk Stalkings always followed Monday Night Raw. He was also in the 1998 movie Terror at the Mall, so if you plan on making a film about bad hombres at the mall, well, call Rob. Or his agent.

Oh yeah. Pauly Shore is in this, doing Pauly Shore things, acting as Pauly Shore. There was a time — oh, let’s call it 1989  to 1994 — when these things were allowed to go unpunished. I feel the same way about Mr. Shore as I do about Limp Bizkit (ironically, Pauly was in their videos for “N 2 Gether Now” and “Break Stuff”). My wife adores them all; I wish endless psoriasis on all of their mons pubises.

And there’s Ken Foree. He’s in this, sure. But this is not the nadir of his career, one that has spanned films like Death Spa and the woeful oeuvre of Rob Zombie. His appearance in Lords of Salem will make you want to take last week’s paycheck and send it to him in the hopes that he never need appear in such a film again. But I digress.

Eric finally realizes that Suzie is falling for Rob Estes, so he plants a bomb that will wipe out the whole mall, but not before he dispatches a piano player with a snake that bits his dick off and shoots the Most Interesting Man in the World with a flaming arrow into a very conveniently arranged wall of flammable containers. It’s the most 80s explosion, in a very 80s movie, complete with folks doing picture perfect flips to their death versus realistically falling.

Does it work? It depends on how old you are. Are you nostalgic for a simpler time when piano players would tickle the ivories for old ladies while everyone got school clothes at Chess King? Did you ever rock some Bugle Boys? Remember when Tiffany toured and played your mall? Then you’re going to love this.

Young folks — you are the reason why 25% of all the malls are closing in the US in the next five years and I’ll never be able to physically go into an FYI store again. It’s enough to make me want to emulate Eric, but I’d have nowhere to go. What could I do, send Snapchats of my burned up forehead and threaten you with cyber bullying?

One last bit of IMDB interest. I just love this trivia, which makes little to no sense:

The mall in this movie was actually based on a real mall, the Kirkgate Shopping Mall in Bradford, England. Owing to a dispute with security officers, the Kirkgate Mall refused to be acknowledged in the end credits.

This mall looks no different than any other mall. And if those guards get out of hand, they should just shoot ’em with a crossbow. This movie has taught me how well this works. But watch out for that one guard. You know the one. Weird sunglasses. One earring. Likes to tell you that he set your old boyfriend’s house on fire and poured gasoline all over you, too.

So where can you find a copy of this? Well, you can’t go to the mall. We got ours from our friends at VHPS and it’s a great quality copy. Or you could just watch Morgan Fairchild die below, thanks to Cinemorgue, which has told the internet since 2001 who has died in what movie and how. Thank you for your service, Cinemorgue!